


Twenty Random Facts About Mickey/Ricky Smith

by Nope



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-14
Updated: 2007-09-14
Packaged: 2018-11-02 22:51:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10954374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: It's the little things that make the differences.





	Twenty Random Facts About Mickey/Ricky Smith

  1. Long after everything, Mickey still wonders. Brothers are different. A few seconds later, a few sperms over. It doesn't take much to change a person entirely. And yet, in a world where there are Zeppelins everywhere and a President instead of a Prime Minister, the same two people came together at the same exact time and produced the same exact child. Not just once, but repeatedly, he's wandered around the estate here and he still recognises people, lots of them, normal, ordinary people with exact matches in another universe. Mickey feels this should be significant, should be special in some way, should indicate a bigger plan or something, but he doesn't know what. He can't see it. Different but the same, same but different. What, if anything, does it mean?  
 
  2. Mickey was born a few minutes before midnight to Linda and Jackson Smith, wrinkled, brown and screaming.  
 
  3. Linda suffered post-natal depression. It never really went away. When Mickey was three, she tried to kill herself with sleeping tablets. That's when her therapy began. Mickey doesn't remember this, and no one ever tells him.  
 
  4. Jackson Smith worked at the key-cutters on Clifton's Parade and one day he went to Spain and he never came back. Mickey cried in his room for a bit, until Gran smacked him and told him to eat his dinner. It turned out having his Dad gone wasn't all that much different from having him around, so Mickey got by on the occasional postcard and a present every now and again. His parents were his parents and that would never change.  
 
  5. Mickey dreamed about monsters for weeks after the church, even though everyone told him it never happened -- monsters and a pretty girl he already couldn't quite remember, both slowly fading away to nothing. Gran wouldn't let him watch horror or sci-fi movies on telly for ages afterwards.  
 
  6. It took ten years for Mickey to notice Rose again and, to be honest, he didn't remember her at all, but he liked her smile, and it didn't matter that he got ragged on for cradle-snatching by his mates because she could give as good as she got. Anyway, it stopped them calling him a fag after that thing at Chris's party, mostly, which was good because Mickey had been getting a bit worried. His teachers called him a late bloomer. His Gran said he was as lazy in this as in everything and slapped him one.  
 
  7. Besides, jacking off with your mates wasn't exactly queer. They were just, you know, lending a hand in a time of need.  
 
  8. Rose dumped him to run off with Jimmy Stone. At least, that was how Mickey chose to remember it. The months in between these two events weren't all that important.  
 
  9. Mickey scraped through his A-Levels with passable, if not University acceptable grades. The night of the results, he blagged his way into Notorious with a few mates and had a drink or five and met some new and interesting people, although possibly they were only interesting because he was well on his way to being shitfaced, and later they somehow ended up in tattoo parlour or something, details got blurry, but he definitely remembered the feel of the needles on his bicep, clutching at the arm-rests and whimpering because it hurt, it hurt so good.  
 
  10. It itched like sunburn when Mickey woke up with a fresh dressing on his arm and his head on the tattooist's chest.  
 
  11. The tattooist's girlfriend didn't so much mind as join in.  Blokes were all right, Mickey decided, but he liked girls more.  
 
  12. He never got the guy's name and the girl was using a different one each time they bumped into each other in nightclubs and ended up shagging between dances. Mickey kinda felt skeevy about this sort of thing but, on the other hand, who turned down strings-free sex with hot chicks?  
 
  13. Except Mickey, obviously, because Rose was back and she seemed actually interested. Mickey reckoned she saw him as safe after Jimmy and he could live with safe. With normal. He liked normal, and he liked Rose, and he liked being normal with Rose.  
 
  14. Rose liked the tattoo.  
 
  15. Still, Mickey never could come up with a good lead in to "fancy a threesome then, babe?", not then, not later when they were stuck together in an alternate universe, not even in between the two when they were on the TARDIS, bobbing around the vortex, not that he particularly wanted to shag the Doctor or anything, just, you know. When in Rome.  
 
  16. Although they had briefly stopped off in Rome between France and Parallel Earth and Mickey reckoned what you actually did in Rome was run away from Centurions a lot. And he'd learned driving a chariot was nothing at all like driving a car.  
 
  17. He got his very own first car, an old N-reg Peugeot. Mickey loved that car even though it was, really, a piece of junk. Rose refused to have sex in the car because it was cramped, but she grinned at him and said "plenty of room on the bonnet, yeah?" and, it turned out, there was.  
 
  18. When the Peugeot finally gave up and died beyond even Mickey's ability to coax another few hundred miles out of it, he salvaged the license plates and kept them on his wall. The only time he feels really bad about ending up stuck in another universe is when, years later, he can't remember if it was "GWB 696N" or "GVB 696N" and that, now, there is no way he will ever find out. Rose gives him weird looks when he brings it up and Jake does that sad smile thing he does when Mickey reminds him of Ricky, so Mickey stops talking about it.  
 
  19. He thinks maybe the Doctor would understand. Big things are -- well, not easy, but you have to deal, so you do. It's the little things that trip you, bring you down; the flotsam and jetsam left in the big things' wake.  That and, you know, cracks in the walls of time.  
 
  20. Mickey reckons he's still just a normal guy. Sure, he's watched himself die, jumped time-streams and saved the universe a few times, but, the thing is, so has pretty much everybody he knows. He's not Ricky and, as much as he sometimes wanders, it doesn't matter all that much. Like the Doctor always said, you can't change established events, but you can make your own future and normal? Well, normal is what you make of it



+/+

  1. Ricky never wonders anything now. He never really believed in Heaven, even if Gran did used to dress him up smart as anything and drag him off to church every Sunday, at least until her eyes failed entirely. He doesn't believe that, somewhere, the dead are waiting to embrace him, except maybe in a zombie sort of way. Only memories go on, and a body, both slowly fading away to nothing. But people? People just stop. Ricky has stopped. There are worse alternatives.  
 
  2. Ricky was born a few minutes after midnight to Linda and Jackson Smith, wrinkled, brown and screaming.  
 
  3. Linda suffered post-natal depression. It never really went away. When Ricky was three, she tried to kill him with her sleeping tablets, crushed into powder and stirred into her juice. He didn't like the taste and knocked the mug over and Linda shook him so hard he had finger shaped bruises for weeks. Ricky doesn't remember this and no one ever tells him.  
 
  4. Jackson Smith worked at the key-cutters on Clifton's Parade and one day he went to Spain and he never came back. Ricky learned it was practically impossible to sneak on board a plane and security guards didn't particularly care how old you were when you tried, especially if you bit them.  
 
  5. Not all that much changed with his Dad gone. Gran still took him to the park and pushed the swings and gave him a good hiding when he knocked Jake off the see-saw, punching and kicking the boy because he said stuff about Ricky's parents; even if they had left him, his parents were his parents and that would never change, and you didn't let people just say that stuff. You didn't let people get away with things.  
 
  6. They were best friends for a few weeks after, then ended up in different schools and basically didn't talk to each other again until they both started attending the same sixth form, more than ten years later. Neither remembers the other. It's just one of those things. They bond, as boys do, over cars and pop culture and video games and gratuitously violent movies and badly dubbed Asian imports and, also, that time Jake turned around and punched Dave Stone for using the n-word.  
 
  7. Plus neither had a problem with giving each other a helping hand in times of need which, given they were teenagers in their prime, was quite a lot. Guys just, you know, being guys didn't count as queer.  
 
  8. Jake got uptight when Ricky said so, and he didn't work out why until he was punching Jimmy Stone in the face for calling Jake a fag while Jake just stood there and took it.  
 
  9. So Ricky kissed Jake right there in the school quad in front of everyone, which wasn't really all that brave considering they were only there to pick up their A-Level results and, chances were, they wouldn't see any of these people again, and it was kinda awkward for a bit, but they got better and then it was awesome and way, way better than that time Tricia Delany snogged him in the art supplies cupboard.  
 
  10. Girls were all right, Ricky decided, but he liked guys more.  
 
  11. Which actually made things with Jake awkward for a while, because he'd never actually done the dating thing with guys before, or, well, anyone, seriously, and they have some very confused evenings before Jake finally snaps at him to "stop bloody trying so hard" and Ricky does and things sort of settle themselves out until they have their old routines back, only now with more shagging and not bothering with anyone else when they hit the nightclubs.  
 
  12. It's right around then that the earpod, which wasn't exactly uncommon before, goes from being a fashion to a craze to a "people look at you oddly if you're not wearing them", like everyone going still on the dance floor is just fine, like having machines talk to your brain wasn't fucked up at all, like everyone conforming to a single massive monoculture in London, fucking London for god's sake, was right and proper and fucking normal.  
 
  13. Sometimes you just couldn't be non-conformist enough.  
 
  14. Although being so non-conformist that you had no plans at all didn't really help things all that much. Covert protest could only go so far before you felt kind of stupid for fighting corporations with graffiti and fly posters.  
 
  15. Then Gemini found them, and everything became real.  
 
  16. Ricky never actually owned a car, because it was always just easier to take whichever car he was currently working on that would actually go and use that, which had the added advantage that he could park pretty much anywhere he liked, since it was always the owner of the vehicle who ended up having to deal with the tickets. He reckoned he owed the City about thirty-grand by the time they cottoned on, and he'd already left Clancy's for the Preachers full time at that point.  
 
  17. Jake owned the van. It was not exactly subtle but it moved like anything. Ricky could never remember the registration -- and Jake mocked him for days when he was forced to admit that he, Ricky, big time car mechanic, hadn't a clue what make or model or it was without looking -- but Ricky knew that it was spacious in the back and, with a few blankets and a space heater and Jake, more than comfortable enough to sleep in. And shag, of course, which was important. Ricky liked the sleeping together bit just as much, although he never told Jake this. There was thin line between romantic and soppy and he had a reputation to maintain.  
 
  18. They never talked about the future. There was too much now, what with being underground guerrilla militia hero types. Anyone could show up at any minute, guns and sirens blazing, be they cops or secret government agents or Cybus industries robot spies ready to bring them down, capture, torture and murder.  
 
  19. Or, you know, duplicates of yourself from alternate timelines and their alien friend.  
 
  20. And Ricky doesn't really expect to get caught or die, not even when he's looking at himself through a chain link fence with a cold robot hand closing around him, so his last thoughts are, hey, he really was pretty darn good looking, huh? and wondering if maybe he can't get a threesome in later. And then he's killed. Zap. Gone. Deleted, as the parlance goes. There's no service, just Jake and Mickey, mourning and saving the world. Ricky has stopped.  
 




End file.
